Review: Deluxe Edition of Elliott Smith's 'Figure 8'

One of the most subtly interesting things about his thoroughly fascinating career was how Elliott Smith gradually built up his sound from album to album. From the bare-bones guitars of Roman Candle to his additional embellishments of drums and bass on a few tracks of his eponymous sophomore album to the more consistent use of such band-like arrangements on Either/Or to the full-blown Revolver's-been-turned-over sound carnival of his masterpiece and Dream Works debut, XO. 

Smith's second album for Dream Works was even bigger and more polished than XO. Yet, as extroverted as it sounded, Figure 8 continued to express the inner life of a troubled and deeply introverted artist. That push-and-pull is what makes Smith's "big-production" period so appealing. Many artists make deliciously enjoyable music and many plumb the depths of their souls and dredge up dark stuff. Very, very few are capable of or willing to do both simultaneously. 

So, even more so than XO, Figure 8 is a record that's just as appropriate to blast at a barbecue as it is to meditate on through headphones by candlelight. And though the nearly hour-long album feels a bit like it should have been trimmed down, there's not too much any reasonable editor could justifiably cut. Even something as seemingly slight as "Everything Means Nothing to Me" is sweeping and grand and overwhelmingly moving (and it's my personal favorite track on the album).

Review: 30th Anniversary Vinyl Edition of the 'Clueless' Soundtrack

Saturday Night Fever's pivotal spot in the seventies notwithstanding, the nineties was the decade in which soundtrack albums really became as important as the visuals they accompanied. Chuck five seconds of a sellable pop song in a film, dump the entire song on a five-inch plastic disc, and a label just might move a metric ton of CDs. If those five seconds belong to an alternative rock group, you might even sell discs to kids who wouldn't be caught dead watching the visuals in question. No joke: Melrose Place may be stupid, but the Melrose Place soundtrack is unironically awesome!

Review: The Eyes' 'My Degeneration'

The Eyes are often lumped in with the freaky British mod groups like The Who, The Creation, and Small Faces, and their best-known tracks do sort of crib the riff from "I Can't Explain" and Townshend's pickup-flicking from "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere". But with their sneering R&B vibe, The Eyes owe as much to the The Pretty Things. Tracks like the "I Can't Explain"-cribbing "I'm Rowed Out", the "Anyway, Anyhow"-cribbing "When the Night Falls", the "My Generation"-cribbing "My Degeneration", and "The Immediate Pleasure", which just might not crib anything at all, have the echoey, mysteriously seedy vibe of the Pretties during their "Can't Stand the Pain"/"£.S.D." heyday. The Eyes certainly sounded much tougher than their uniforms of stripey shirts affixed with pics of their own faces in eye-shaped fields might have suggested. I guess they would have to.

Review: 'Pink Floyd: Behind the Music'

Mike Evans tends to pen the kinds of rock and roll books in which visuals take prominence over text. When some of his previous subjects include The Who and David Bowie, two of rock's most electrifyingly visual artists, the formula works as it should, and the fact that Evans doesn't exude a ton of personality as a writer is not super consequential. 

Pink Floyd: Behind the Music is as visually oriented as Bowie Treasures or The Who: Much Too Much, but since the subject is a quartet of nondescript guys in t-shirts and jeans who tended to hunch motionlessly over their instruments, Evans has to haul more weight. 

Review: 'Buzz Me In: Inside the Record Plant Studios'

What do Electric Ladyland, There's a Riot Goin' On, Black Sabbath Vol. 4, Innervisions, Rumours, Cheap Trick '77, Parallel Lines, a spiffy 12-track machine, a room-size Moog, a suite of sex-fetish rooms, and 162 tons of cocaine have in common? They're all among the ingredients that made the Record Plant THE Record Plant. 

Founded by engineer Gary Kellgren, the Record Plant was the first successful studio by and for hippies. He decked the place out with high-tech equipment (a board capable of recording twelve tracks...twelve!) and, inspired by the perpetual skinny-dipping party at Peter Tork's house, an atmosphere of sexual and chemical malaise. It's where rock and rollers could escape the sterility of their grampa's recording studios to rock out, experiment, snort, and screw as much as their bodies and labels' budgets could bear.